


The Items that will Lead to our Future

by orphan_account



Category: Ghost - Mystery Skulls (Music Video), Mystery Skulls (Band)
Genre: Alive!Lewis, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multi, written pre-character profiles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-02-25 20:12:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2634731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur has no words on his back or names on his shoulders. He doesn't have a timer or prophetic dreams and sometimes he doesn't want to have any of that... but sometimes he looks at Vivi and Lewis and feels like he has a missing limb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

In a world of soulmates not everyone meets theirs the same way. Some people are born with words on their backs, names on their shoulders. Some people can see a string attaching themselves to others. Timers and dreams, lyrics at the bottom of the soul; some people don't have soulmates and that's fine. Not everyone needs other halves. Despite the movies and rom coms soulmate bonding is a rare occurrence.

But not for Lewis and Vivi. Lewis and Vivi are soulmates, founded by impulse as if Fate was guiding their every move. They don't tell the story very often but it's obvious by their lovestruck gazes. They're meant to be.

It starts when Lewis is ten. He's at the mall when he sees something in a women's jewelry store. A golden locket with a golden chain, it opens when you push it in and there's a little slot so you can put a picture in. He begs his parents for it. His dad is ready to pull him away from the window and never speak of it again, his mother though, knows.

She buys him it and when his dad won't shut up about it in the car his mother says, "At least it wasn't that expensive." Lewis isn't paying attention, he puts the gold chain on, it's a little too big so it lands in the middle of his torso but it's also perfect. He dons it everywhere and at night, he dreams of the first picture he's going to put in there.

It starts when Vivi is twelve and needs a pair of glasses. Her old ones are too outdated and she needs another outfitting. She's prepared to get an exact copy of her old ones, blue rimmed ovals with little butterflies on the side but then she notices the purple tinted glasses on the side, half moon and calling to her.

They're a perfect fit, fills her vision requirements exactly, and she walks out with the ones in the display glass with no problem.

They meet at the local park. Lewis' heart shaped locket starts beating during one of his morning runs, slower and faster like a radar. Vivi's glasses start showing a footprint trail glowing bright. She takes them off and then back on and realizing what this is, starts running in circles. They meet by bumping into each other, Vivi's glasses projecting a dark purple glow around Lewis and Lewis' locket popping open.

They take a picture that day, just a few seconds after they introduce themselves. Vivi takes out her camera phone and they get someone to take their picture, Lewis with his arms around Vivi's and both of them smiling like lovestruck fools. It's the first picture to go in Lewis' locket.

They've been a couple ever since.

Arthur tries not to be jealous when they cuddle up in the van or when they can't seem to take their hands off each other. They're a couple; more importantly their  _soulmates_  and he has no right when it's written in the stars.

Arthur has no words on his back or names on his shoulders. He doesn't have a timer or prophetic dreams and sometimes he doesn't want to have any of that... but sometimes he looks at Vivi and Lewis and feels like he has a missing limb.

(He forgets about his seventeenth birthday. How he always wanted a pickup truck, maybe a sports car if he had enough money, but instead his feet led him to a van in the middle of a junkyard. He forgets feeling like this was something he  _needed_. He forgets their first meetings: almost running over Mystery, the van breaking down next to Lewis and Vivi during one of their morning jogs. What he doesn't forget is that the feeling that he belonged with these people in one form or another.)


	2. Mazes Can't Stop Our Gathering

When the times comes where they're separated, Lewis' locket always leads him back to Vivi and vice versa. It's part of the reason the couple is so relaxed when it comes time for separating for an investigation despite the horrors that might chase after them. It's part of the reason Lewis and Vivi are always to be separated, switching partners with Mystery or Arthur so in theory they'll always come back together, all four. Except it doesn't work that way. They find each other while Arthur is left running away from the ghost or ghoul but it's fine. It's fine.

(It's not. He has nightmares where he's desperately lost. Where  _they're_  desperately lost but they're together and he is nice and found and  _alone_. Sometimes he's not totally alone, Mystery is there with his yellow spectacles but it's not the same unless they're  _all_  together but they're not. Like a missing limb.)

But one day he is lost again. More than that they are all lost in a conjured maze, hedges upon hedges, feets and yards and meters apart. There are skeletons of those whose wandered years fruitlessly stuck and he fears he'll become one of them. He'll become bones at the corner of a hedge where the light never hits and vines will grow through his rib cage. He'll be a nameless skeleton devoured by the wild. He'll be alone.

He walks for hours, feels his stomach grumble at him and curses as he sees another dead-end. Another skeleton. Another sign that he should just give up.

Which is when he hears Mystery's barking. There's no doubt about it, the dog could bark louder than anything given the right incentive.

"Mystery!" He yells. There's a bark and a second later the hedges shake and the fox-dog is landing gracefully in front of him. His eyes glow red but Arthur is too relieved to be scared, going in for a hug. The fox-dog transforms and soon he's nothing but regular Mystery, tired and hurt. He took quite a beating from the crazed lunatic that trapped them there.

"Hey, what happened to your collar?" Arthur asks because they're gone he notices. Which is weird because he's never seen the dog without the collar, the little red and yellow tag that doesn't have an address or phone number but a bright yellow question mark to which Vivi aptly named him. ("Ben", the dog said once he revealed that, yes, he was a talking dog. "That's my real name." They tried for two weeks before Ben just sighed and started getting used to being called Mystery).

Mystery glares, which fair, not the right time.

"So how do we get to the others?" He asks.

"I don't know." Mystery says and that's…

"How do we get out?" He asks.

"I don't know." Mystery repeats which is bad. Very bad.

They wander into the evening. The night sky which he studied religiously during his boy scout days is foreign to him. Every turn looking the same and every dead-end a new thorn at his side. He thinks of Lewis and Vivi, no doubt having found each other already. Were they out? Or were they helplessly lost like them? He hoped they were out. He hoped…

He puts his hands in his pockets to stave them from the cold the setting sun brings and comes back out with the little toy that was already in the van; the blue little monster with the sunglasses and yellow tongue that always hung around the van's rear view mirror. He vaguely remembers taking it when they stepped outside the van but can't remember why. Some poorly timed impulse, a glitch in priorities.

He squeezes it in his hand and thinks,  _if only_. If only they were all soulmates then they wouldn't have to die apart. If only he had a radar item like Lewis' locket and Vivi's glasses. If only he had his van, then they might have a chance...

Mystery hears it first. The demon dog pauses, ears swivelling up and then Arthur hears it. A car engine getting louder.

The Mystery van drives through the hedges like it's nothing and parks in front of them with a sick twist, leaving tire tracks on the grass and leaves to catch the night wind. The doors fling out and Mystery gets in first, Arthur slides into the passenger expecting to see Lewis or maybe Vivi in the driver seat.

He sees absolutely no one.

He screams because not only is no one driving there isn't even a key in an ignition. Mystery though, just noses his collar off the dashboard, hitting his snout at the right angle so the collar squeezes past his head and paws at it until it fits snugly where it belongs. Was this just one of Mystery's abilities? Eating a lot, turning into a demon dog and taking over the Mystery van? If so why didn't he do it sooner?

The Mystery van goes off without another delay, tearing down the hedges like cards and  _he has absolutely no idea where it's taking them_.

"Mystery. It's you controlling the van and not some creepy ghost right?" Arthur asks. He's struggling with the seatbelt as the car jumps, his head hitting the top of the van's roof. He lets go of the seatbelt to instead grip his seat with a clamp-like vice. If this ride gets any bumpier he might throw up. The window wipers turn on its own, getting rid of the leaves and branches on the window.

He really hopes Mystery is doing this.

"Nope." The dog says and, yeah, he might just throw up. "I think you are."

"What's that supposed to mean!" Arthur screeches as the car bursts through what is obviously meant to be the middle of the maze and subsequently tears down the round circular arch made of rotted wood. A skeletal hand plasters itself on the windshield before the wipers toss it away into the ground.

He tries to take the wheel, stop the van but Mystery warningly bites the air and he pulls back; tries to become one with the seat when he notices Mystery's collar is glowing, bright red like his eyes in his fox form. The tag is lifting a little, the tip pointing somewhere straight ahead.

Before he can ask they stop, hard and fast with Arthur practically thrown forward, his grip still tight on his seat. He hears his bones crack, feels his upper arm and shoulder muscles throbbing with the pain but thankfully he doesn't hit his head on the glass.

The door opens and Lewis slides in the driver seat, Vivi throwing herself in the back with a, "Just in time guys!" Lewis slides the key into ignition and off they go. Lewis spins the wheel, makes various holes in hedge walls and thankfully, thankfully, the van does not break down from the abuse.

"What- What just-?" Arthur asks before he sees one guy chasing them out of the rear view mirror, eyes popping out, skin half peeling and maggots crawling out of newly made orifices, obviously a more recent wanderer, and faints dead away.

They make it out alive. Somehow they make it out alive and they all dodge the mysterious spells this time and they trap the evil mastermind in some kind of demon portal or whatever. Arthur wakes up an hour after the fact, the stars bright and his own little shock blanket thrown over him as he rests in the passenger side. He feels guilty for not helping out so much but Lewis and Vivi rebuff his apologies with, "If you didn't find us in time we'd be dead."

They explain how they had just met up, Vivi's glasses showing her way to Lewis and Lewis' locket beating like a drumbeat when the necromancer had shown up stating they were all cheaters. He said some words, did a whole narcissistic pledge and raised the dead from the skeletons around them.

Arthur explains how the van is haunted and that Mystery is living up to his name and won't stop being cryptic.

"Haunted!" Vivi cheers, her scratches and gothic band aids doing nothing to ruin her happy visage. "Do you think it was a restless spirit? Someone stuck from the maze trying to help us out? Do you think it's still around?"

She goes into the back, opening trunks and unzipping bags no doubt to find their ghost detector.

"Are you sure it drove itself?" Lewis asks from the driver seat. "It seems fine to me."

"Dude, I'm pretty sure."

Vivi gets the ghost detector, something one of their clients provided them that works sometimes but most of the time ran out of batteries or had to have a part replaced; generally of no use at all.

"It doesn't say anything." Vivi says with a disappointed frown. She grumbles and pouts but Arthur is relieved. "It probably left."

"What was that about Mystery acting mysterious?" Lewis asks, eying the dog stuffing his snout in Mystery Munchies. "Was it one of the spells? Did a spell do something to you Mystery?"

Mystery swallows his self-rewarded treat and says, "Nothing quite dangerous. No need to worry. The spell just weakened some of my more supernatural abilities and removed my collar."

"What? No owned dogs in the maze?" Arthur jokes. He doesn't see the eerie glint off Mystery's glasses, can't really tell Mystery's smiles apart, a smirk from a grin and so he doesn't think anything strange when Mystery says, "If you were blast with the spell there'd be no significant possessions to guide you."

Vivi immediately adjusts her glasses and Lewis closes his still opened locket but Arthur just sits despondently in his seat and cuddles up to the blanket. It's cold and so none of the others mind when Arthur hunches in on himself, bringing his long legs to his chest.

He falls asleep easily, they were in the maze for most of the day and the stars are out. He automatically searches for the familiar constellations that were missing from the maze's early night sky and his eyes droop while searching for the little dipper. He forgets to ask about the glowing collar but it could've just been his imagination. Yeah, probably...

"So what really happened?" Vivi asks quietly once Arthur sinks into dreamland.

"The car drove itself to you." Mystery says simply.

"How? Why?" Lewis asks, "What was that about significant possessions to guide you?" His fingers tap on the wheel, a little tell of his, "How did you find Arthur?"

Mystery shifts, his eyes turning a brief red before becoming their usual dark brown. "I'm good at tracking. Arthur was near me, I could faintly tell, but I sustained damage from the spells. He removed the collar to effectively stop me from tracking you."

Vivi bounces in her seat from the amount of questions she wants to ask but Mystery nips her in the bud. "If you want to find out, ask Arthur."

"In the morning." Lewis says, parking to the side of the road. They've walked for most of the day after all and they're all pretty tired, slipping into sleep in their most trusted vehicle.


End file.
